With the recent rise in popularity of the Internet, many home computer users are using a modem to access the Internet through the Public Switched Telephone Network (“PSTN”) using home telephone lines. The PSTN provides a dedicated circuit from the modem to a server located at an Internet service provider. The server functions as a gateway to the Internet. However, the bandwidth of typical home telephone lines is relatively small, which limits the speed that information can be received from the Internet.
As an alternative to using telephone lines, the Internet can be accessed through coaxial cables using a cable modem. Coaxial cables provide greater bandwidth than home telephone lines and are widely available to existing cable television subscribers. The greater bandwidth also enables new applications such as telephony-over-cable that are not necessarily associated with the Internet.
Unlike telephone lines, existing coaxial cable infrastructure typically does not provide a dedicated circuit to the home user. Instead, multiple users are usually coupled to the same coaxial cable leading to a server located at an Internet service provider. In addition, television signals are also usually sent on the same coaxial cable. Therefore, Internet or other broadband service providers that use coaxial cables must send and receive both data packets that contain data, and control packets. The control packets provide the computer and the cable modem with information needed to send and receive the data packets, such as what frequency packets flowing out of the cable modem should be transmitted on, what should its transmitter power level be, how many packets may be transmitted, what data packets on the coaxial cable are intended for the cable modem, etc.
Known cable modems typically have associated with them specialized processors, memory, and software (or firmware) for capturing and processing the data packets and control packets. This specialized modem hardware and software (or firmware) is in addition to the hardware and software within the computer, and therefore increases the costs of equipping a home computer so that it can utilize coaxial cable for broadband access to data services such as the Internet.